Come on, the song title has ‘LSD’ in it, and the lyrics are pure psychedelia. Of course it’s about drugs.
Lennon said his inspiration was his son’s drawing-- the song is not about drugs at all. Why would he lie, since he’s admitted taking LSD and writing other drug-influenced songs? Not about drugs.
Well maybe the original inspiration was the drawing, and the title was a coincidence, but come on, it’s at least a little about drugs, or psychedelia in general.
Within that thread sprang up a bit of a debate over the true origin and meaning of the song Lucy In the Sky with Diamonds, with some of us saying "the song is really not about drugs, it’s about a drawing Julian Lennon made and titled LitSwD. Lennon has said on multiple occasions that the song is not about drugs or LSD, and why would he lie since he was open and upfront about his drug use? While others of us, including me, said “oh come on, the song has LSD in the title; and have you listened to the lyrics? It’s totally about drugs”.
Sol, without further ado, I thought a poll might be in order.
It is the most psychedelic song on the Beatles’ most psychedelic album. It was certainly as influenced by drugs as “Come Together” was influenced by Chuck Berry (a case Lennon lost, BTW). And as anybody who has read more than a couple Beatles biographies can tell you, the Beatles themselves are the least reliable narrators of their own history.
Still, Lennon seemed to be not just a little obsessed by sleeping and dreaming around that time (which explains much of his attraction toward LSD and, later heroin). Saying drugs had no influence on any song by the Beatles in 1967 is like saying war had no influence on Robert Service in 1916. Whatever the answer, I doubt it is just one thing (a child’s drawing or druggy wordplay - or even just both). But drugs influenced everything in Lennon’s life at the time. His own son? Not so much.
It’s possible the original idea came from the drawing. But there’s no way in the world that the Beatles looked at that title and refrain, not to mention the title and refrain in combination with the rest of the song, and didn’t realize, before release, how it would be taken. And they released it with that title.
The drawing exists, and is reasonably well-described by the title and lyrics
(and isn’t a bad drawing for a little kid, incidentally). If you had to pin down one thing that the song is about, it’s about that drawing.
Which is not to say that it has nothing to do with LSD. The Beatles were almost certainly using when they composed it, and that use almost certainly had an influence on their creative process. Even the decision to base a song on a child’s drawing, and that drawing in particular, was probably drug-influenced.
Though if you get down to that, the Beatles used a variety of drugs. Their work was probably also influenced by marijuana, alcohol, and several other drugs (I don’t know the full list of what they used). The only thing, I think, that ties this song to acid, specifically, is the coincidence of the initials of the title.
Going with “Origin is as described by Lennon but their general mindset had a drug-oriented slant at the time so some of that slipped in there even if not written as a drug anthem”. In other words, Lennon can be sincere in his explanation while it still be “druggy”.
I’ve only seen the drawing online; the images I’ve seen may not even be genuine. My first thought was “wow, that’s pretty darned good for a three year old. Almost too good”. Also, I wasn’t aware that three years old kids understand the concept of titling their art.
It seems to me more likely that John saw the drawing - possibly on LSD at the time-and ran with it. Or, maybe he wasn’t tripping at that moment but associated the images with an acid trip.
I guess that puts me in the majority of folks that think the drawing could well have been the inspiration, but for JL to pretend complete innocence is a load of finger pies.
In a 2004 interview, Paul McCartney said that the song is about LSD, stating, “A song like ‘Got to Get You Into My Life,’ that’s directly about pot, although everyone missed it at the time.” “Day Tripper,” he says, “that’s one about acid. ‘Lucy in the Sky,’ that’s pretty obvious. There’s others that make subtle hints about drugs, but, you know, it’s easy to overestimate the influence of drugs on the Beatles’ music.”
I don’t think Lennon and the entire Beatles group were so dense as to not recognize the title of the song would be construed as anything other than LSD.
“No really, it’s about my son’s drawing” is an ice-cube-on-the-Sun cover story.
Of course it’s about drugs and of course they figured in advance someone was going to stick a microphone in front of their faces and ask whether or not they were promoting drug use. They probably figured there was a good chance they’d have to have this conversation with their record label, in fact. John had been burned for that “Beatles are bigger than Jesus now” quote a few years earlier so they had reason to think interactions with the media had to be strategic and could be adversarial.
Keep in mind, if you know the era well, or please consider as relevant information if you don’t: doing psychedelic drugs at the time wasn’t merely about feeling good and escapism, it was about breaking your mind free of conventional thinking and being enlightened. Those promoting it thought of themselves as acolytes of a political-spiritual awakening, thought of themselves as very responsible people doing the right thing. They may have been doing it with joy and clowning and mockery of the rigid institutions, but they were nevertheless (mostly) doing it seriously.
So I think they had a Plausible Deniability story on hand that they’d probably discussed in advance. ETA: yeah, what Magiver just said.
It’s possible that the song is not explicitly ABOUT drugs; there’s certainly a small chance of that being true. Maybe that picture is real and that really is what inspired the song, maybe the title really is a coincidence.
However, what is absolutely undeniable is that song is BECAUSE of drugs.
I mean, we know the drawing exists. You can Google it up in five seconds. We know if Lennon wrote a song about drugs he’d have happily said so in the 13-14 years he had to say it. We know the Beatles wrote songs about silly, childish things.
According to the song listing in the book from the Sgt Pepper Super Deluxe Box Set (and the Beatles Bible website), the initial inspiration was Julian’s drawing and the imagery in the lyrics was from Alice In Wonderland. Of course John was tripping in those days, so my take is that each one of those things was an ingredient that resulted in the final song.
I had always thought that it was a little from column A, a little from column B. I thought Lennon eventually admitted that lyrics are at least partly inspired by his acid trips, but the title came from his son’s drawing and the fact that it contains the letters LSD was pure coincidence.
“Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” wasn’t a title, per se, of the drawing. It was what Julian said when John asked him what the picture was. It’s a description: It’s a picture of his friend Lucy, and she’s in the sky. With diamonds.